Just to show how strange, mysterious, and romantic life is, I will
relate to you in a faithful narrative a few of my experiences the other
day--it was a common Saturday. Some people may say that my experiences
were after all quite ordinary experiences. After _all_, they were not. I
was staying in a little house, unfamiliar to me, and beyond a radius of
a few hundred yards I knew nothing of my surroundings, for I had arrived
by train, and slept in the train. I felt that if I wandered far from
that little house I should step into the unknown and the surprising.
Even _in_ the house I had to speak a foreign tongue; the bells rang in
French. During the morning I walked about alone, not daring to go beyond
the influence of the little house; I might have been a fly wandering
within the small circle of lamplight on a tablecloth; all about me lay
vast undiscovered spaces. Then after lunch a curious machine came by
itself up to the door of the little house. I daresay you have seen these
machines. You sit over something mysterious, with something still more
mysterious in front of you. A singular liquid is poured into a tank;
one drop explodes at a spark, and the explosion pushes the machine
infinitesimally forward, another drop explodes and pushes the machine
infinitesimally forward, and so on, and so on, and quicker and quicker,
till you can outstrip trains. Such is the explanation given to me.
I have a difficulty in believing it, but it seems to find general
acceptance. However, the machine came up to the door of the little
house, and took us off, four of us, all by itself; and after twisting
about several lanes for a couple of minutes it ran us into a forest. I
had somehow known all the time that that little house was on the edge of
a great forest.
*****
Without being informed, I knew that it was a great forest, because
against the first trees there was a large board which said “General
Instructions for reading the signposts in the forest,” and then a lot
of details. No forest that was not a great forest, a mazy forest, and
a dangerous forest to get lost in, would have had a notice board like
that. As a matter of fact the forest was fifty miles in circumference.
We plunged into it, further and further, exploding our way at the rate
of twenty or thirty miles an hour, along a superb road which had a
beginning and no end. Sometimes we saw a solitary horseman caracoling
by the roadside; sometimes we passed a team of horses slowly dragging
a dead tree; sometimes we heard the sound of the woodman’s saw in the
distance. Once or twice we detected a cloud of dust on the horizon of
the road, and it came nearer and nearer, and proved to be a machine
like ours, speeding on some mysterious errand in the forest. And as we
progressed we looked at each other, and noticed that we were getting
whiter and whiter--not merely our faces, but even our clothes. And for
an extraordinary time we saw nothing but the road running away from
under our wheels, and on either side trees, trees, trees--the beech, the
oak, the hornbeam, the birch, the pine--interminable and impenetrable
millions of them, prodigious in size, and holding strange glooms in the
net of their leafless branches. And at intervals we passed cross-roads,
disclosing glimpses, come and gone in a second, of other immense avenues
of the same trees. And then, quite startlingly, quite without notice,
we were out of the forest; it was just as if we were in a train and had
come out of a tunnel.
And we had fallen into the midst of a very little village, sleeping on
the edge of the forest, and watched over by a very large cathedral. Most
of the cathedral had ceased to exist, including one side of the dizzy
tower, but enough was left to instil awe. A butcher came with great keys
(why a butcher, if the world is so commonplace as people make out?),
and we entered the cathedral; and though outside the sun was hot, the
interior of the vast fane was ice-cold, chilling the bones. And the
cathedral was full of realistic statues of the Virgin, such as could
only have been allowed to survive in an ice-cold cathedral on the edge
of a magic forest. And then we climbed a dark corkscrew staircase for
about an hour, and came out (as startlingly as we had come out of the
forest) on the brink of a precipice two hundred feet deep. There was
no rail. One little step, and that night our ghosts would have begun to
haunt the remoter glades of the forest. The butcher laughed, and leaned
over; perhaps he could do this with impunity because he was dressed in
blue; I don’t know.
*****
Soon afterwards the curious untiring machine had swept us into the
forest again. And now the forest became more and more sinister, and
beautiful with a dreadful beauty. Great processions of mighty
and tremendous rocks straggled over hillocks, and made chasms and
promontories, and lairs for tigers--tigers that burn bright in the
night. But the road was always smooth, and it seemed nonchalant towards
all these wonders. And presently it took us safely out of the forest
once again. And this time we were in a town, a town that by some mistake
of chronology had got into the wrong century; the mistake was a very
gross one indeed. For this town had a fort with dungeons and things, and
a moat all round it, and the quaintest streets and bridges and roofs and
river and craft. And processions in charge of nuns were walking to and
fro in the grass grown streets. And not only were the houses and shops
quaint in the highest degree, but the shopkeepers also were all quaint.
A greyheaded tailor dressed in black stood at the door of his shop, and
his figure offered such a quaint spectacle that one of my friends and
myself exclaimed at the same instant: “How Balzacian!” And we began
to talk about Balzac’s great novel “Ursule Mirouët.” It was as if
that novel had come into actuality, and we were in the middle of it.
Everything was Balzacian; those who have read Balzac’s provincial
stories will realise what that means. Yet we were able to buy modern
cakes at a confectioner’s. And we ordered tea, and sat at a table on the
pavement in front of an antique inn. And close by us the landlady sat on
a chair, and sewed, and watched us. I ventured into the great Balzacian
kitchen of the inn, all rafters and copper pans, and found a pretty girl
boiling water for our tea in one pan and milk for our tea in another
pan. I told her it was wrong to boil the milk, but I could see she did
not believe me. We were on the edge of the forest.
*****
And then the machine had carried us back into the forest. And this time
we could see that it meant business. For it had chosen a road mightier
than the others, and a road more determined to penetrate the very heart
of the forest. We travelled many miles with scarcely a curve, until
there were more trees behind us than a thousand men, could count in
a thousand years. And then--you know what happened next. At least you
ought to be able to guess. We came to a castle. In the centre of all
forests there is an enchanted castle, and there was an enchanted castle
in the centre of this forest. And as the forest was vast, so was
the castle vast. And as the forest was beautiful, so was the castle
beautiful. It was a sleeping castle; the night of history had overtaken
it. We entered its portals by a magnificent double staircase, and there
was one watchman there, like a lizard, under the great doorway. He
showed us the wonders of the castle, conducting us through an endless
series of noble and splendid interiors, furnished to the last detail of
luxury, but silent, unpeopled, and forlorn. Only the clocks were alive.
“There are sixty-eight clocks in the castle.” (And ever since I have
thought of those sixty-eight clocks ticking away there, with ten miles
of trees on every side of them.) And the interiors grew still more
imposing. And at length we arrived at an immense apartment whose
gorgeous and yet restrained magnificence drew from us audible murmurs
of admiration. Prominent among the furniture was a great bed, hung with
green and gold, and a glittering cradle; at the head of the cradle
was poised a gold angel bearing a crown. Said the sleepy watchman:
“Bed-chamber of Napoleon, with cradle of the King of Rome.” This was the
secret of the forest.
[Illustration: 0279]